Yosemite views.

Collection History

This digital collection assembles many of the earliest and most important historical photographs representing the exploration of the American west. The majority of these holdings came to the Library in the 19th century as contemporary works illustrated with original photographic prints, or as print portfolios.

Background

With the birth of photography in 1839, cameras began to accompany explorers everywhere, including the American west. However, technical shortcomings required skilled draughtsmen to translate the earliest camera images into conventional reproductive prints for publication or distribution. Not until the 1860s was the first practical paper photographs of the West achieved -- by rival camera artists Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916) and Charles L. Weed (1824-1903). Their mammoth albumen prints of California's Yosemite Valley were exhibited and published internationally, introducing the grandeur of the West, and its otherworldliness, with the truthful realism granted by photography.

Andrew Joseph Russell (1830-1902), an ex-Army photographer who had trained to be a painter, spent the 1868-1869 season with the Union Pacific Railroad as the route moved west from Nebraska toward Promontory Point in Utah. His smaller albumen prints were issued by the railroad in an elaborate presentation volume - the Library's copy came from the personal library of Samuel J. Tilden.

The United States Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian produced a similarly handsome published album of original albumen prints from expeditions in 1871-73 photographed by Timothy O'Sullivan (1840-1882), a Civil War photographer, and William Bell (1830-1910). Additional photographs from the Survey appeared in special atlases published to accompany official reports, acquired routinely by the Library as government documents.

William Henry Jackson (1843-1942), also a self-taught practitioner, photographed for the Union Pacific Railroad, and joined the Hayden Survey of Yellowstone, which was made a national park in 1872. At the end of the decade Jackson opened a studio in Denver and at the end of the century he was a principal of the Detroit Publishing Company.